CBP cover-up teams win.

I can’t say that I didn’t try. I gave five years of my life to researching and uncovering the U.S. Border Patrol’s illegal and secret coverup teams called Critical Incident Teams. It was and still is the largest secret cover-up team known in U.S. law enforcement. It is probably the biggest accomplishment of my life. I even have an entire section of my essays devoted to it. I am the only person researching and writing to document how the agents killed people and how the agency helped them get away with it. The lessons learned on this journey of death and injustice have been many and devastating. 

The biggest lesson I came away with was personal. I understand that I have spent my entire life chasing acceptance. I was the black sheep of my family, forever stuck in not understanding the why. In the Border Patrol, I did everything asked of me to perfection. I was an award winning agent, something I have never admitted to because it felt like bragging about being the biggest asshole in a room full of assholes. But it is documented in my records housed on this very site. I even kept my mouth shut for 20 years about being raped into the agency like they demanded. I kept their biggest secrets until it almost killed me.

These agencies are full of people like me needing to be accepted.

I recognized the desire for acceptance in myself only once I began writing about it. And when I met people who led organizations claiming to care about the death and killing of innocent people, I again fell into that endless desire to be accepted, to be a part of something. I ignorantly believed that being Latino/a and working in immigrant rights meant they cared about human beings. 

It was that lesson I refused to learn, and so it returned. 

Like the agents, most of the NGO’s are in it for the money and proximity to power. The heads of these organizations work hand and glove with CBP, Border Patrol and ICE. They have helped create the brutal policies that we see today and often invite heads of these agencies to speak at their conferences. It is as if they think they are all working to make the system better. 

This is why little changes, why the human rights organizations see little progress. They are part of the brutal system, forever accepting millions in grants to churn out op-eds, polls and policies for democrats that just kill more people. Publicly they demand dignity and humanity for migrants. Privately, they are not shy about saying how they really do not care. When I said we must tell every family’s story about the cover-ups, they replied, “I don’t give a fuck about the other families. If it does not benefit my orgs, then I don’t care.” There was no more money to be gotten out of talking about the teams, and I was no longer needed. 

I had given up on the HBO Critical Incident film about the teams ever coming out. Given up on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights decision on the Hernandez Rojas case that is featured in the film. Given up on my work ever seeing the light of day with a large audience. Given up on the truth coming out. Just when I had moved on, the Commission’s report came out finding former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott and his agents likely committed murder and covered it up with the illegal teams. They recommended the case be re-opened. 

Then the movie came out, and my hopes were renewed. I expected Congress to see it and point out that Scott is now the head of CBP. I expected there to be hearings. I expected them to realize that the agents and agencies must be held accountable, especially since CBP agreed they were not legal. I expected democrats to seize on the opportunity mainly because Scott admitted in congressional testimony that the teams who were now in his CBP-Office of Professional Responsibility (internal affairs) and were in charge of the evidence in the Alex Pretti shooting. 

Scott admitted on live television that agents from the illegal cover-up teams who had been moved to CBP were investigating the Pretti killing. But nobody cared. No one said a word to Scott about it. Even Senator Alex Padilla who is in the film, has not said one word. No democrat has said anything. 

They do not care about deaths of migrants and the cover-ups. They never have. That is how the system got built in the first place. 80,000 dead from 30 years of democrats’ deterrence policies. What did I expect? What does a handful more of dead bodies from recent beatings, tasings and shootings matter? What’s a few dozen more bodies from ICE custody matter? What will hundreds more from sealing the border off with the military matter? What will the thousands likely to die in our concentration camps matter? 

I want to say I have learned my lesson.

At the moment, I have many CIT cases to write about. Perhaps, I will write another book. I have been waiting to finish my piece about Valeria Tachiquin, a U.S. citizen murdered by Scott’s agents in 2012 and again covered up by the same San Diego Critical Incident Team that is shown in the film. She was killed in the same manner as Renee Good. Had we learned our lessons from her killing, had we held Scott accountable back then, Renee might still be here. 

With the merger of HBO and Paramount under one of Trump’s billionaire bros, I expect Critical Incident to be banned. It will disappear like all the bodies, because they do not care about justice. I am angry about the politicians, but they have been clear about who they are.

Perhaps that is the lesson.